Pole-axed! Smuda quits after Czechs bounce out co-hosts

Franciszek Smuda stunned the Euro
2012 co-hosts when he quit as Poland boss after they crashed out the
European Championships on Saturday.

Poland draw with both Greece and
Russia, but fluffed their lines in a must-win game against the Czech
Republic, going down 1-0 to finish bottom of Group A.

Poles apart: Franciszek Smuda left frustrated by Poland exit

Franc's for nothing: Smuda quits

Smuda, 63, confirmed that he will not continue in the post.

'This is the end of my adventure,' he said.

'The contract expires at the end of Euro 2012. Thank you all.

'For these two and a half years, we have created a team we can count on in the future. They were not perfect, they were not as good as we imagined, but this is football.'

Smuda suggested his players had been overconfident in their approach to the game against the Czechs and had failed to perform when it mattered. They missed a host of chances and in the end were undone by Petr Jiracek's second-half strike.

'We have to swallow this bitter pill today,' Smuda said. 'I think that probably we were too sure about the possibility of winning against the Czech Republic.

'We did everything we could. We misplaced too many passes in the second half and had to work hard to win back possession.'

Smuda added: 'For this two and a half years we have really created a team that we can count on in the future. Maybe we can improve in the future.

'It wasn't perfect, it wasn't as good as we could have imagined but this is football, this is how it works.'